Wednesday, January 20, 2016

As a rule, if you are looking for bad dating advice, you
should ask an ideologue. Someone who believes that reality is what he thinks it
will invariably give you bad advice. I will not tell you which kind of
ideologue will give you the worst dating advice, because you know already.

Now, competing with the ideologues are the
psycho-scientists. Practitioners of the new science of behavioral economics want to encourage, seduce or nudge people into doing what they
want them to do. You see, great minds are convinced that they know better than
the common man or woman, and certainly better than you.

It looks like science, but it more closely resembles moral
philosophy. Science, as David Hume famously remarked, is about what is. Ethics
is about what you should do. The two are not even remotely the same.

Several years back, Duke University’s Dan Ariely, a master
in the field of behavioral economics, offered up some dating advice. He
observed the way people normally behave on first dates and pronounced it to be
insufficient and inadequate. You would have expected that a scientist would try
to understand why people do as they do. Instead, Ariely dismissed it because he
found it to be less likely to produce an immediate passionate attachment. This
assumes, of course, that two strangers who meet at random want to have a
passionate attachment, immediate or eventual.

Ariely describes the way first daters normally behave:

When
going on a first date, we try to achieve a delicate balance between expressing
ourselves, learning about the other person, but also not offending anyone —
favoring friendly over controversial – even at the risk of sounding dull. This
approach might be best exemplified by an amusing quote from the film Best in
Show: “We have so much in common, we both love soup and snow peas, we love
the outdoors, and talking and not talking. We could not talk or talk forever
and still find things to not talk about.”

In the real world, first daters, the ones who have not been
influenced by psycho-science follow a strategy that I have occasionally
recommended, one that I consider to be sensible and normal. For some recent
comments see Sunday’s post: In Praise of Small Talk.

According to the small talk strategy two people on a first
date try to get to know each other; they collect relevant information about
each other; they try to find out what they have in common; and they respect
each other’s privacy.

Sometimes they choose to continue to date and sometimes they
prefer to look elsewhere. Note well, in more than a few cases, cases that
cannot be quantified by the methods of behavioral economics, people who meet at
random might choose to continue to date or not based on other factors, factors
that are generally subsumed under the category of chemistry. It has certainly
happened that the face and the profile that you find irresistible online turns
out to be someone you find viscerally unappealing.

Without knowing whether there is or is not chemistry,
without knowing how much these people really have in common, we cannot know
whether their strategy is productive or useless.

We will add that people who are serial daters or who have
had multiple relationships or who are meeting someone they met on a dating site,
tend to be more cautious about getting involved. This caution is certainly
warranted.

Obviously, you would be more upfront with someone you had
known from the neighborhood or who had been vetted by your parents. In that
case you would not need to ask informational questions because you would know
the answers already.

Ariely bemoans the fact that normal dating strategies do not
guarantee a stimulating conversation. And yet, sometimes people do not want a
stimulating conversation. They want to establish common ground and want to avoid getting involved
in a drama. They believe that showing respect is better than being rude and intrusive. They know, as Ariely does not seem to know, that a relationship
that begins with drama is likely to continue as drama.

And, in many cases when people date serially they often know
at first glance that they do not want to date the other person. For all I know
they are just being polite. One does not understand why this offends behavioral
economists, but, it does.

In Ariely’s words:

Basically,
in an attempt to coordinate on the right dating strategy, we stick to
universally shared interests like food or the weather. It’s easy to talk about
our views on mushroom and anchovies, and the topic arises easily over dinner at
a pizzeria – still, that doesn’t guarantee a stimulating conversation, and
certainly not a real measure of our long-term romantic match.

The psycho-scientists want us all to be less boring. This is
not a scientific value; it is effectively an aesthetic disguised as an ethic.
When your life as a couple is well-organized and well routinized it often looks
boring. And yet, if you disorganize your life you will have much more Sturm und Drang- it’s easy to do—but you
will also be wasting time and energy on constant drama.

If that’s what you need to be stimulated, be my guest. If
you think that that will form the basis for a good relationship, you are wrong.

Ariely studies the problem by examining written
conversations, conversations where you would show even more caution than you
would in a face-to-face conversation. He finds them to be boring. Again, by
whose standards are they being judged boring? And perhaps the people do not
want to be more than boring.

He writes:

And we
found a general trend supporting the idea that people like to maintain boring
equilibrium at all costs: we found a lot of people who may, in actuality, have
interesting things to say, but presented themselves as utterly insipid in their
written conversations. The dialogue was boring, consisting mainly of questions
like, “Where did you go to college?” or “What are your hobbies?” “What is your
line of work?” etc.

One feels somewhat dismayed to see that today’s youth think that it’s normal to interrogate each other on dates. At times these
interrogations border on inquisitions. Some of the questions are normal and
anodyne, necessary information you would want to have before getting involved with
anyone. Others are intrusive, invasive and disrespectful.

Isn’t it possible to have a conversation without using a
question and answer format? It is always more blessed to give than to take. And if you offer information about yourself you allow the other person the freedom to choose what to divulge in return.

In order to solve a problem that may not even be a problem, Ariely
decided that life would be more passionate if psycho-scientists could script
the conversations. Note well, the students who would be participating in this
experiment would really be playing by a partial script. So much for spontaneity
and for having the freedom to conduct your first date as you wish.

Obviously, the psycho-scientists were correct to note that
if you fill a conversation with intrusive and insulting questions, the kinds of
questions that any normally constituted adult would know better than to ask, things would become more emotional. Ariely called them interesting and
personally revealing, but they are rude and insulting.

On the one hand the conversations were not boring, but by
whose standards was that to be judged? And, what do we know about the long term
outcomes of these forms of insults.

Ariely was thrilled by the results:

The
questions we chose had nothing to do with the weather and how many brothers and
sisters they have, and instead all the questions were interesting and
personally revealing (ie., “how many romantic partners did you have?”, “When
was your last breakup?”, “Do you have any STDs?”, “Have you ever broken
someone’s heart?”, “How do you feel about abortion?”). Our daters had to choose
questions from the list to ask another dater, and could not ask anything else.
They were forced to risk it by posing questions that are considered outside of
generally accepted bounds. And their partners responded, creating much livelier
conversations than we had seen when daters came up with their own questions.
Instead of talking about the World Cup or their favorite desserts, they shared
their innermost fears or told the story of losing their virginity. Everyone, both
sender and replier, was happier with the interaction.

As I have occasionally noted, this type of conversation with
a stranger is like having sex with someone you do not know, or sexting a
stranger a photo of you, naked with your face covered. Is it more lively than a
boring conversation? You bet it is. Does that make it desirable?

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish on the first
date. If you prefer to get to know someone before disrobing, thus to exercise
some discretion and some judgment about handing out your favors, Ariely would
find you boring. If you reverse the process and disrobe before getting to know
the person, you will have a less boring story to tell, but you will be
compromising your privacy in order to play a role in a psychodrama.

Think about it? Do you think it wise to offer up your sexual
history to a stranger? Do you think that you should, on a first date, offer up
your medical history, your STDs and abortions to a stranger? What sentient
adult would do such a thing, unless he finds his life lacking in cheap thrills.

Anyone with a modicum of sense does not share important
private information with a stranger. There
are some things about you that the world does not need to know. There are some
things about you you’re your closest friends do not need to know. Someone you
do not know is not someone you can immediately trust. Before you expose
yourself to him and risk exposure to the world, better stick to talking about
the weather.

2 comments:

We might mention Dan Ariely is a special case, since he was badly burned in a fire, and so his own perspective comes from being "freak" of sorts, not attractive enough to gain attention merely for his looks, so we can imagine he's overcompensating for that with a dominant personality that strives to always be interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely

And for that matter, we might accept all scientists are "freaks" in the sense of not thinking like everyone else, and they also want to study EVERYTHING, so they're looking for patterns, and so they might decide to date a few dozen people while developing their ideas on what works, and what doesn't, assuming you agree what the dating goals even are, which is a standard problem.

I remember reading Richard Feynmann's surprise when he learned even back in the 1940s if you ask a woman out to dinner, she'll say yes, but then she'd go home, but if he asked ahead of time if she'd go back to his place after dinner, he was much more successful in finding women to bring home, and women even liked his upfrontness of intention. I can't quite picture it, but if you're confident and good looking, perhaps you can get a young woman to say yes without even knowing you. OTOH, if he wasn't as good looking, perhaps his success rate would go down even lower than if he tried to win her over at dinner.

Myself, I remember seriously thinking in my 20s that I didn't want to get too good at that dating thing, but I could imagine dating as a set of skills and one that might be somewhat different than ordinary relating.

That is I could imagine there's a "game" going on of pull-and-push, and the standard version is the man is supposed to pull the woman closer, and the woman is supposed to push away and keep the tension going. So the man is acting more interested than he really is, and the woman is acting less interested than she really is. (Which suggests Feynmann's young women were not playing the game right if they were selling themselves cheap too early because of his good looks.)

So apparently that game can be played by talking about the weather, or talking about something else that is less "boring", and perhaps people who play well are those who can keep stirring the conversation around and figure out what raises the energy and what lowers it.

Perhaps this same skill of seduction is what Donald Trump uses on his audience? "No," thinks Donald, "this audience doesn't want to hear about the weather, they want drama!" People want drama, they just don't want the sort that exposes things they don't like about themselves.

Anyway, I'd agree learning the art of small talk ought to be "dating level 1", just avoiding disaster, and if that's good enough, you can also use your new small talk skills in all sorts of relationships.

But if you want to play "the game" to raise your status, to get the girl of your dreams, or the guy of your dreams, then you need "dating level 2", so you have to stir up passion, including possibly by being unduly aggressive, or being unduly mysterious, and ready to reverse direction, as the circumstances and gender roles demand.

Ideally no one plays those games so successfully that they need to keep playing with new people after they found the love of their life!

So wise young people can consider, if a man or woman is seducing you, consider whom else they will be seducing in the future when you're not around.

OTOH, if you're going into sales, or running for president, why not become an expert at the art of the deal?

I don't have any idea if Dan Ariely is overcompensating, but I do know that if anyone on a first date with me asked the questions, “How many romantic partners did you have?”, “When was your last breakup?”, “Do you have any STDs?”, “Have you ever broken someone’s heart?”, and/or “How do you feel about abortion?”, MY next question, directed to the waiter, would be "Check, please?"